With virtually all functions and purposes for which we use electronic products, there continues to be demand for new features, higher speed, larger data, or improved portability. These demands continually drive the electronics industry to reduce size, improve utility, and increase performance of integrated circuit devices contained within these products to which we have become accustomed.
Electronic products have become such an integral part of our daily lives. Notably, many portable electronics with complex integrated circuits are not only common but also used without the slightest thought about the underlying technology. Many products such as cell phones, portable computers, voice recorders, cars, planes, etc. include very sophisticated electronic technology to which we have become accustomed.
There has been constant pressure within the semiconductor industry to reduce dimensional footprints as well as increase quality, reliability, and performance fueled by consumer demands for smaller, higher quality computers and electronic devices that operate faster, with more information, and more reliably under broader operating conditions and environments.
The smaller and smaller integrated circuits are commonly assembled into integrated circuit packages for protection and interconnection to other integrated circuits, integrated circuit packages, printed circuit boards, or other subsystems. The development of integrated circuit packages requires not only compatibility with a wide range of integrated circuits but can also provide integration or combinations not available to a single integrated circuit device.
Many electronic products have taken advantage of including multiple integrated circuit devices or integrated circuit packages within a larger integrated circuit package. The larger integrated circuit package provides protection from operating conditions, intraconnection between components, and interconnection to a next level subsystem. Modular components can also reduce defects lowering overall costs of the integrated circuit package.
While stacking integrated circuits within integrated circuit packages has improved dimensional densities and footprints it has not been without problems. Integrated circuit and integrated circuit package component dimensions have been limited and restricted by manufacturing methods and equipment. Component features and performance are all too often compromised by the restrictive limits of the available space.
Attempts to provide additional space for multiple components have also suffered from poor connectivity between the integrated circuits and integrated circuit packages within the larger package. Attempting to alleviate limited and restricted connectivity has commonly resulted in increasing size and complexity.
Despite the advantages of recent developments in integrated circuit and integrated circuit package manufacturing, there is a continuing need for improving integrated circuit device and integrated circuit package connectivity and stacking to provide improved dimensional size of available space and as well as structural integrity, manufacturing yield, and product reliability.
Thus, a need still remains for an integrated circuit package system to provide improved package-in-package stacking integration. In view of the ever-increasing commercial competitive pressures, along with growing consumer expectations and the diminishing opportunities for meaningful product differentiation in the marketplace, it is critical that answers be found for these problems.
Additionally, the need to save costs, improve efficiencies and performance, and meet competitive pressures, adds an even greater urgency to the critical necessity for finding answers to these problems.
Solutions to these problems have been long sought but prior developments have not taught or suggested any solutions and, thus, solutions to these problems have long eluded those skilled in the art.